I've had several interesting investigative challenges since moving into my new house. Its loaded of course with lots of QRM. Even in the audio range. I once chased an intermittent alarm after moths only to find out it was my weather radio out in the garage! (a std weekly test!).

Or a refrigerator and a small freezer that lays against the wall and vibrates when it shuts down and you here it in the walls!!

But radio wise QRM is rampant. Anything with a wall wart or even a power supply is suspect. I have switched to LED lamps in the house for energy savings, but even the old halogens under the kitchen cabinets are noisy! Then you have the computer controlled appliances, stoves, ovens, washers, dryers.  Unless the product has a CE approval or the later UL 544 compliance etc, its going to be a noise source. And many cheap products fall into that category.

There was an issue a while back with industrial grade grow lamps. Being in an industrial area, it didn't matter. But when people started buying them to grow there "plants" at home, they were horrible RF radiators, and the FCC and the DEA didn't have a hard time finding the illegal culprits!

Then you have the power line carrier transmissions! Not the power itself, but the digital information it carries! Ask any techy in England. I don't know about the rest of Europe. But here too, my electric meter is remote read, another PLC.

Recently the town just installed an improved remote reader for my water meter. We have drive by meter readings... A little antenna now sticks out of the buried water meter!

My power lines are buried, as are any new housing development. Along with every other service coming to the house. Then there's the sprinkler system and its controller for the lawn...

My 2 HVAC heat pumps in the attic where I want to put my antennas for transmit (QRP) and receive...

The list goes on and on...

But the large AC power transformer locations are not near me, except of course for the transformer in my front yard! (;-(. I'm not so much concerned about the local QRM as I am about the house QRM. Maybe smaller in energy but more stronger and annoying to my listening.

Someday I'll make a DF antenna and search my property... LOLOL.. Ill have to buy up lots of ferrite beads!

Mortimer says "Stay Safe"

Best Regards

Phil
KD2HTN / WA2069SWL

Long: 34.210293 Lat:-78.057048
FM04xf 30dl
______________________________

http://kd2htn.blogspot.com/

On Monday, December 7, 2020, 6:34:50 AM EST, radiojayallen <radiojayallen@...> wrote:

Yes, you can walk around your neighborhood and listen. And driving around you will hear how the noise from overhead lines varies. Living in an area with underground utilities is the best scenario and I have been lucky enough to have that both in my old home and in the new one.

I do have one strange noise source in my new house I haven't figured out yet but luckily it is infrequent. On parts of the AM band I will hear a squeal which almost totally blanks out medium strength stations on 590 and 630 KHz but it only seems to happen once or perhaps twice a day for about 2 minutes. Some days I never hear it. Makes it tough to isolate...really odd though.

--
73
Phil
KD2HTN / WA2069SWL

Long: 34.210293 Lat:-78.057048
FM04xf 30dl

[Edited Message Follows]

I did order an R-108 on the Amazon Prime day price. I just received it this morning and I'm beginning to evaluate it. I noticed an earlier message thread on the warranty offered by 'RadioWow' on the radio as being essentially worthless. NO real surprise there on any low to moderate priced items from China as being essentially throwaway items.

Due to the covid situation, Amazon has extended the return time frame for purchases until 1/31/21. So I have basically a 90 day plus warranty time period on the radio!

My 30 minute impression of the R-108. Speaker output sounds very good for a tiny radio. Good volume. FM sensitivity seems typical for DSP radios these days. AM reception here (daytime) also seems typical. The radio looks to be solidly constructed. Looks to be a keeper so far. 

Update:

• I did a middle of night casual comparison of the R-108 with my CountyComm GP5 (aka PL365) on 6 or 8 weak AM BCB signals. The R108 was more listenable in all cases. The sensitivity seems a little better on the R108 and the audio was definitely more listenable compared to the GP5. I suspect this is due to the superior speaker and better audio processing so far as suppressing the hissy noise that was more prominent on the GP5.
• My 'ATS' AM BCB scan found 70 stations. Perhaps 10 or 12 were not listenable and I easily deleted a few. A deleted memory essentially leaves an empty channel in the middle of the full memories. I would prefer that the R108 would automatically 'squash' the memory channel's to eliminate the empty memories or just sorted the memories by the frequency. (People who maintain a memory reference sheet would not want this!) 
• The tuning knob as two selectable speeds. The actual control takes a little force to rotate from one detent to the next.. Not really stiff but far from being able to 'spin the tuning dial' 
• The supplied user manual looks to be complete and well written.
• As of today, 10/18/20, there is a $10 off coupon on the R108 on Amazon .. making the price to be $41.97 .. which is just pennies more that the Prime day price.

Update #2 The battery life is on the order of 8 to 10 hours of listening time. My R108 seems to also draw some level of current when not even on such that it will slowly drain the battery on it's own. This is a minor inconvenience. Overall, a nice solid little radio that works well for general usage.

KE8WO

Awesome review.  When I did a search for the 1733, I found the 1780 which looks very interesting.  Have tested it?

Have a great day,

Tom Stiles (hamrad88 - YouTube)

We are in rural SW England and  have overhead power and telephone lines,
the latter swamping HF reception with VDSL outspew.

Recently, a new 11kV-230V transformer was installed in the adjacent field.
Even before our houses were re-connected, QRM jumped up to about S6-7.
In the 8 hours without mains power, noise was S1.
(The friendly chaps also put their digger shovel through our water-supply pipe...)

Michael UK

On 07/12/2020 11:34, radiojayallen wrote:
Yes, you can walk around your neighborhood and listen.
And driving around you will hear how the noise from overhead lines varies.
...

Yes, you can walk around your neighborhood and listen. And driving around you will hear how the noise from overhead lines varies. Living in an area with underground utilities is the best scenario and I have been lucky enough to have that both in my old home and in the new one.

I do have one strange noise source in my new house I haven't figured out yet but luckily it is infrequent. On parts of the AM band I will hear a squeal which almost totally blanks out medium strength stations on 590 and 630 KHz but it only seems to happen once or perhaps twice a day for about 2 minutes. Some days I never hear it. Makes it tough to isolate...really odd though.

Hi everyone out there,

Powerlines, appliances etc... do indeed generate a lot of QRM and can be a nuisance, but sometimes powerlines can also be pretty useful for the hobby.

I live in the east of France and I drive around a lot in the area and I found out that on the motorway, right where a 220 000 volt power line crosses the way, the FM DX picture changes completely.

The power line runs SE-NW, roughly in a direction from Freiburg (south-west Germany) to Luxembourg.

Every time I drive near that line, the local station on 106.6 MHz gets wiped out by a station from Germany, an another local station on 93.3 MHz is also blown away by one in Luxembourg (300 kms away). In both cases the distant signal is very stable. The RDS data are even present on the display of the car radio.

It seems the powerline acts like a duct, and the signals propagate along it. Also, and this might explain the thing partly, it consists of 6 cables with a 3 metre interval (1λ)  between them.

Unfortunately I can't park the car underneath the line to explore the whole FM band, but I'm pretty sure the are some more DX stations to be found that way.

When that corona lockdown nonsense is over I'll try and find a place in the countryside near the line and use my Tecsun PL-380 to see what I can get.

73, Rémy.

I have made my first review of an ULR receiver, the Sangean DT-250. Can be seen here: https://youtu.be/BABe620f-3M

It's in Spanish, and could also be used to get better Spanish language skills for DXers abroad. 😉

¡Buen DX! 

Jorge Garzón (EB7EFA · EA1036 SWL) 

QTH: IN83ag / 43º15' N · 03º56' W

Urb. San Roque 95, casa 5 (Villasevil)

39698 Santiurde de Toranzo (ESPAÑA - SPAIN)

..................................................................................

Blog: IberiaDX  · Twitter: @IberiaDX

Hi Paul,

In the middle of this year I moved house from the town of Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills, to a rural property at Ashbourne south of Adelaide.

My noise floor at Mount Barker was S7 on the 40m band on my dipole antenna.

At Ashbourne I have zero man made noise.  I can hear a pin drop.

BUT, if the power outlet for our TV is switched on in the main living area, the noise jumps up to S5-6.  That is easily fixed.  If I'm on the radio, my wife (who is also an amateur) watches the other TV at the other end of the house, which generates no noise.

We also recently had an outdoor NBN extender installed, to allow internet to our shed.  When that was installed the noise floor went up to S7.  Needless to say that has now been removed, and I am back down to zero noise again. 

Even our reverse cycle heating and cooling, when on, generates some noise on the bands.

Something as small as a power outlet or NBN in your own home, can cause sufficient noise to be very annoying.  Yet alone, everyone else's home surrounding you.

You might want to have a look at QRM.guru.  Here is the link.....

https://qrm.guru/

Good luck.

Regards, 

Paul VK5PAS.

That's a very interesting comparison. Thank you very much. 

73!

Jorge Garzón (EB7EFA · EA1036 SWL) 

QTH: IN83ag / 43º15' N · 03º56' W

Urb. San Roque 95, casa 5 (Villasevil)

39698 Santiurde de Toranzo (ESPAÑA - SPAIN)

..................................................................................

Blog: IberiaDX  · Twitter: @IberiaDX

En lunes, 7 de diciembre de 2020 04:26:03 CET, Paul Blundell <tanger32au@...> escribió:

Over the past few months I have been making good use of my TEAC PR130 and Digitech AR-1733. I have completed a shootout of them over the past couple of weeks and present the results below.

FEATURES: 
Both these radios fit in to the ultralight radio category, the TEAC PR130 retails for $34.95 and the Digitech AR-1733 is $79.95.

Physically the PR130 is a much smaller pocket sized radios, this I find fits in to my pocket well and it often comes out and about with me. The AR-1733 is a larger radio and it better suited to bed side / serious DXing and listening. The lack of a full keypad on the PR130 is due to the much smaller size. The limited buttons it does have do work well and to my mind do work in a logical fashion. While the AR-1733 does have a full keypad for frequency entry, I find myself most using the side mounted tuning knob.

The PR130 only covers the AM and FM broadcast bands, the AR-1733 covers these, plus the long wave, shortwave and VHF Airband, the later of these is an interesting inclusion and makes for some interesting listening. I often leave mine on our ATC frequency overnight as it makes for some good background noise.

Both radios take two batteries, in the case of the PR130, these are AAA, the AR-1733 takes AA, these provide much longer run times. In both cases I have found the battery life on both radios to be very good. On the AR-1733, it does exhibit some strange behaviours when the batteries start to get low, I always keep a spare set close by. The AR-1733 is also a little sensitive to rechargeable batteries, once they get a bit of age and usage, they don’t work as well with this radio, the PR130 happily runs on two AAA rechargeables.  

The AR-1733 has two bandwidth filters, the PR130 has none, and this at times can allow the AR-1733 to filter out interference better.

SITES:
A. At home, with unavoidable noise, under real world conditions.

Barefoot:

AR-1733: Over an extended period of time I have tested this radio at home. The internal aerial has a good level of directional gain and this allows me to null out pest stations. During daylight hours, I can often log a large number of Tasmanian and Victorian stations. After dark, I can log most states of Australian. I have noticed that the AR-1733 is more sensitive to local noise sources, such as mobile phones. I often need to make sure I leave mine in the other room. I have also noticed that our washing machine causes issues, it took me a while to track down some of the random band noise to this.

PR130: The performance of this is normally 75%-80% of my AR-1733. The biggest issues are that as this has a much smaller internal aerial, it does not pull in signals as well. Where it does perform better is handling overload from local stations, whereas the AR-1733 struggles with stations on either side of my local HPON station, the PR130 will, with careful orientation pull in acceptable signals. The smaller size also allows it to be placed for the best possible signal levels. Of late I have been focusing on logging some South Australian stations and this has produced some good results. I also find it makes a good bed time radio and after dark it really comes to life.

 

AR-1733 / Home
FREQ	Callsign	Area Served	Purpose	Power
531	3GG	Warragul	Commercial	5k	4	5	4	3	4
549	2CR	Cumnock	National	50k	2	3	4	2	2.75
594	3WV	Horsham	National	50k	5	5	5	4	4.75
621	3RN	Melbourne	National	50k	5	5	5	4	4.75
774	3LO	Melbourne	National	50k	5	5	5	4	4.75
1053	2CA	Canberra	Commercial	5k	2	3	4	1	2.5
1179	3RPH	Melbourne	Community	5k	3	4	3	2	3
1341	HPON GEELONG	Geelong	HPON	5k	4	4	3	3	3.5
1422	HPON MELBOURNE	Melbourne	HPON	5k	3	4	3	2	3
1503	3KND	Melbourne	Community	5k	3	3	2	2	2.5
PR130 / Home
FREQ	Callsign	Area Served	Purpose	Power
531	3GG	Warragul	Commercial	5k	3	4	4	4	3.75
549	2CR	Cumnock	National	50k	0	2	3	2	1.75
594	3WV	Horsham	National	50k	4	5	5	4	4.5
621	3RN	Melbourne	National	50k	4	4	5	4	4.25
774	3LO	Melbourne	National	50k	5	5	4	5	4.75
1053	2CA	Canberra	Commercial	5k	1	2	3	2	2
1179	3RPH	Melbourne	Community	5k	2	3	2	2	2.25
1341	HPON GEELONG	Geelong	HPON	5k	3	4	3	3	3.25
1422	HPON MELBOURNE	Melbourne	HPON	5k	3	4	4	3	3.5
1503	3KND	Melbourne	Community	5k	3	2	2	3	2.5

B. Portable, in the field. More or less an ideal site QRM free to check receiver's features. For this test I have chosen Talbot Road Lookout.

Barefoot:

AR-1733: Generally this performed better away from home and at a higher location. The biggest issue was due to the outdoor location, audio quality suffered due to wind and passing traffic noise.

PR130: The performance of this was on par with at home and it didn’t have as much of a performance boast as the AR-1733. I found that the alignment of this with the direction of my target station was critical, as it was slightly closer to my local HPON station, this appeared to desense the PR130 to some extent.

 

AR-1733 / Talbot Road Lookout
FREQ	Callsign	Area Served	Purpose	Power
531	3GG	Warragul	Commercial	5k	5	5	4	4	4.5
549	2CR	Cumnock	National	50k	3	3	4	2

QRM is our main nightmare these days, no doubt! 

But I am still shocked with electric lines in Australia, Canada, the States together with some EU countries. When I lived in Oz and later visited the USA and Canada, I found electric poles and air cables a real mess. Fortunately, here in Spain electric distribution lines have to be buried in urban areas and/or encapsulated to avoid crossing streets, parks and open areas. Of course there are still some to be arranged but the most of them are well organised. 

Unfortunately, this is not an 'insurance' to avoid QRM as house appliances, street lights, house IF filters (none) or transformers are still there, so being a DXer or serious radiolistener involves a carefully place to live or enjoy radio and nature most of the times. 

¡Buen DX! 

Jorge Garzón (EB7EFA · EA1036 SWL) 

QTH: IN83ag / 43º15' N · 03º56' W

Urb. San Roque 95, casa 5 (Villasevil)

39698 Santiurde de Toranzo (ESPAÑA - SPAIN)

..................................................................................

Blog: IberiaDX  · Twitter: @IberiaDX

En domingo, 6 de diciembre de 2020 23:46:02 CET, Paul Blundell <tanger32au@...> escribió:

Over the weekend we had a small power outage (due to weather). During this time I noticed a real drop in the background noise on the band. Before I could do much testing, the power came back on.

Below is a photo of the power lines outside my house, would this be adding to my issues?

Terrific review, Paul...comprehensive and clearly presented...

Sent from my iHead

On 7/12/2020, at 4:26 PM, Paul Blundell <tanger32au@...> wrote:

Over the past few months I have been making good use of my TEAC PR130 and Digitech AR-1733. I have completed a shootout of them over the past couple of weeks and present the results below.

FEATURES: 
Both these radios fit in to the ultralight radio category, the TEAC PR130 retails for $34.95 and the Digitech AR-1733 is $79.95.

Physically the PR130 is a much smaller pocket sized radios, this I find fits in to my pocket well and it often comes out and about with me. The AR-1733 is a larger radio and it better suited to bed side / serious DXing and listening. The lack of a full keypad on the PR130 is due to the much smaller size. The limited buttons it does have do work well and to my mind do work in a logical fashion. While the AR-1733 does have a full keypad for frequency entry, I find myself most using the side mounted tuning knob.

The PR130 only covers the AM and FM broadcast bands, the AR-1733 covers these, plus the long wave, shortwave and VHF Airband, the later of these is an interesting inclusion and makes for some interesting listening. I often leave mine on our ATC frequency overnight as it makes for some good background noise.

Both radios take two batteries, in the case of the PR130, these are AAA, the AR-1733 takes AA, these provide much longer run times. In both cases I have found the battery life on both radios to be very good. On the AR-1733, it does exhibit some strange behaviours when the batteries start to get low, I always keep a spare set close by. The AR-1733 is also a little sensitive to rechargeable batteries, once they get a bit of age and usage, they don’t work as well with this radio, the PR130 happily runs on two AAA rechargeables.  

The AR-1733 has two bandwidth filters, the PR130 has none, and this at times can allow the AR-1733 to filter out interference better.

SITES:
A. At home, with unavoidable noise, under real world conditions.

Barefoot:

AR-1733: Over an extended period of time I have tested this radio at home. The internal aerial has a good level of directional gain and this allows me to null out pest stations. During daylight hours, I can often log a large number of Tasmanian and Victorian stations. After dark, I can log most states of Australian. I have noticed that the AR-1733 is more sensitive to local noise sources, such as mobile phones. I often need to make sure I leave mine in the other room. I have also noticed that our washing machine causes issues, it took me a while to track down some of the random band noise to this.

PR130: The performance of this is normally 75%-80% of my AR-1733. The biggest issues are that as this has a much smaller internal aerial, it does not pull in signals as well. Where it does perform better is handling overload from local stations, whereas the AR-1733 struggles with stations on either side of my local HPON station, the PR130 will, with careful orientation pull in acceptable signals. The smaller size also allows it to be placed for the best possible signal levels. Of late I have been focusing on logging some South Australian stations and this has produced some good results. I also find it makes a good bed time radio and after dark it really comes to life.

 

AR-1733 / Home
FREQ	Callsign	Area Served	Purpose	Power
531	3GG	Warragul	Commercial	5k	4	5	4	3	4
549	2CR	Cumnock	National	50k	2	3	4	2	2.75
594	3WV	Horsham	National	50k	5	5	5	4	4.75
621	3RN	Melbourne	National	50k	5	5	5	4	4.75
774	3LO	Melbourne	National	50k	5	5	5	4	4.75
1053	2CA	Canberra	Commercial	5k	2	3	4	1	2.5
1179	3RPH	Melbourne	Community	5k	3	4	3	2	3
1341	HPON GEELONG	Geelong	HPON	5k	4	4	3	3	3.5
1422	HPON MELBOURNE	Melbourne	HPON	5k	3	4	3	2	3
1503	3KND	Melbourne	Community	5k	3	3	2	2	2.5
PR130 / Home
FREQ	Callsign	Area Served	Purpose	Power
531	3GG	Warragul	Commercial	5k	3	4	4	4	3.75
549	2CR	Cumnock	National	50k	0	2	3	2	1.75
594	3WV	Horsham	National	50k	4	5	5	4	4.5
621	3RN	Melbourne	National	50k	4	4	5	4	4.25
774	3LO	Melbourne	National	50k	5	5	4	5	4.75
1053	2CA	Canberra	Commercial	5k	1	2	3	2	2
1179	3RPH	Melbourne	Community	5k	2	3	2	2	2.25
1341	HPON GEELONG	Geelong	HPON	5k	3	4	3	3	3.25
1422	HPON MELBOURNE	Melbourne	HPON	5k	3	4	4	3	3.5
1503	3KND	Melbourne	Community	5k	3	2	2	3	2.5

B. Portable, in the field. More or less an ideal site QRM free to check receiver's features. For this test I have chosen Talbot Road Lookout.

Barefoot:

AR-1733: Generally this performed better away from home and at a higher location. The biggest issue was due to the outdoor location, audio quality suffered due to wind and passing traffic noise.

PR130: The performance of this was on par with at home and it didn’t have as much of a performance boast as the AR-1733. I found that the alignment of this with the direction of my target station was critical, as it was slightly closer to my local HPON station, this appeared to desense the PR130 to some extent.

 

AR-1733 / Talbot Road Lookout
FREQ	Callsign	Area Served	Purpose